The Axe Factor Part I: Pressure starts to tell as Coyle looks for lucky break

Pressure reveals itself in different ways. For Owen Coyle on Monday, the tipping point arrived when asked a relatively simple question.

Do you, the Bolton manager was asked, ever wonder what you might have done differently this season?

‘Yeah, well I think I look back and ask myself how I could have stopped two players suffering broken legs,’ came a rather spiky reply.

Scot of bother: Owen Coyle is feeling the pressure at Bolton

‘The question...what is it that you want to know? Am I as good a manager as I have always been? The answer is, ‘‘Probably better’’.’

Coyle is well regarded in football and reasonably well liked within the media. Even the most sanguine and optimistic characters show signs of strain occasionally, though, and perhaps this was one such moment.

Certainly, it is understandable. Bolton are in the mire and Coyle’s hard-earned reputation as one of British football’s most promising managers is on the line.

The stats are dreadful. The Scot’s record in just under two years at Bolton is 21 wins from 74 Barclays Premier League games. What is more worrying, though, is the fact that he has overseen only three victories in 21 league games dating back to the end of April.

This is a run that undermined what had been a progressive season last time around and finds Bolton sitting at the foot of the table, a point behind tonight’s opponents Blackburn. To Coyle’s credit, he does not duck the seriousness of his — and his team’s — predicament.

‘We need to win a massive game, which we all accept it is,’ he said yesterday. ‘I don’t think we can play the game down. That would be naive. As much as we can think of reasons why we are down there, the table doesn’t lie.

‘The bottom line is that we are in a position we didn’t want to be in and a position we didn’t envisage. The only way to correct that is by giving good performances and winning games. This game gives us the opportunity to do that, to show the world that we are better than our position suggests.’

Anyone who has followed Coyle’s career as a manager is entitled to be puzzled by his current problems. The 45-year-old previously managed at Falkirk, St Johnstone and Burnley and undoubtedly moved each of those clubs forward.

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At Bolton that has not happened and relegation — were it to come —would be hugely damaging for a club that cannot rely on the largesse of owner Eddie Davies for ever. It is worth noting that Bolton’s most recent accounts showed them to be more than £100million in the red.

On Monday Coyle pointed to injuries — the broken legs he mentioned belong to Tyrone Mears and Lee Chung-yong, while Stuart Holden is out with a long-term knee injury — and to poor refereeing decisions. He also believes he retains the support of Davies and chairman Phil Gartside, spotted smiling and looking relaxed at Bolton’s training ground yesterday.

‘I don’t know what they have said publicly but I know what they have said to me,’ said Coyle. ‘I have a terrific relationship with them and they know what I am putting in place at this football club. Because that is behind the scenes, a lot of people don’t see that.

‘But we know it is about points because no matter all the pieces of the jigsaw you might be putting in place, that has to be done on the back of good results. I know that, I’m not evasive. Whatever people want to ask me, I will answer.’

Unlike Steve Kean at Blackburn, Coyle genuinely seems to enjoy the support of not only those at his club but in the town, too.

There are dissenting voices, of course, but not as many as one would normally expect to find around a club that are approaching Christmas still 25 points or more shy of a realistic survival target.

Interestingly, though, Coyle has publicly started to ask questions of his players. As a managerial tactic, that is often seen as pretty much the last resort.

Asked if his players were worried, Coyle said tartly: ‘It shouldn’t worry the players. What worries have they got? I wouldn’t think they have any in terms of what the average, everyday man has. He has to go and provide for his family.

‘The players’ duty and responsibility, as far as I am concerned, is to go and cross the white line and play the best sport in the world. That should be without pressure or fear.’